The history of the universe — from the Big Bang to the end of the year — day by day

The Inheritors

40 kya. “The Inheritors” is a novel by William Golding about the encounter between Neanderthals and modern humans. Like “Lord of the Flies,” it is written with a mid-twentieth century awareness that advanced societies don’t leave behind the potential for cruelty. The novel isn’t all that scientifically accurate, though: Golding’s early humans have bows and arrows, for example.

Neanderthal 1, the first Neanderthal fossil recognized as probably belonging to another species, was discovered in the Neander Thal (=Neander Valley) in 1856. He is close in time to the last Neanderthals: the most recent review of the evidence finds that Neanderthals disappear as a distinct group around 40 thousand years ago. They were almost certainly outcompeted by Homo sapiens who had arrived in Europe earlier. There was probably some kind of coexistence between Neanderthals and H. sapiens over many thousands of years. Regional cultures from this period, like the Châtelperronian, may represent Neanderthals copying the Aurignacian culture of incoming H. sapiens. The final blow may have come between 39 and 38 thousand years ago, when a “Heinrich event” sent cascades of icebergs into the North Atlantic, drastically chilling Europe. Homo sapiens recovered from the cold spell; Neanderthals did not.

Just last year we have learned that one of the earliest modern human fossils from Europe, Oase 1, from Romania (40 kya), has substantially more Neanderthal DNA, 6-9%, than living Europeans. Furthermore, this DNA comes in the form of long stretches of chromosomes, rather than little bits broken up by millennia of recombination, showing that his Neanderthal ancestors go back just a few generations, maybe to some great-great-great-grandparents. We’ve also learned from isotopic evidence that Oase 1 got the proteins in his diet from a broad array of sources, including freshwater fish. Neanderthals, by contrast, look like top predators, gaining nearly all their protein from large herbivores.

And here is some of the art produced by Homo sapiens 40 thousand years ago. The lion man from Hohlenstein-Fels